Questions: Support From Your School (Financial & Other)

[YAK'ker]

our budget is around $15K. We have run our program as an after school activity for 7 years and as a class + after school activity for the last 2. Unfortunately, our shop teacher is retiring this year and there are no plans to fill his job, so we are back to the after school activity mode (if we don't go 4-H, it's still up in the air.)
We only run FRC, have started 2 FLL teams, but they failed after a few years, because there were no adults available to keep them going.
Because adult help is in short supply, we concentrate instead on doing electronics and other recycling...in 4 years, we have diverted approx. 40 tons from the dump, and 1/4 of that was e-waste. we refurbish computers, office furniture, etc. and sell it (we do all of our own fundraising....the school supplies us with a room - last 2 years a Perkins grant-funded shop teacher.)
Our robotics kids also serve as school technology aides and have saved the school tens of thousands of dollars in tech repair calls.